


Rose Blossom Heart

by HaxanHexes (PineNeedles)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Gérard Lacroix/Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Background Lena "Tracer" Oxton/Emily (Overwatch), Background Reinhardt Wilhelm/Ana Amari, Background Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani/Fareeha "Pharah" Amari, Background Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, F/F, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jewish Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Jewish Character, Recovery, Terminal Illnesses, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 05:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11268504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PineNeedles/pseuds/HaxanHexes
Summary: "Angela pulls up a chair and seats herself beside Amélie, listening to her friend with concern. 'Do you think your love is impossible?'Amélie laughs, and the laugh turns into a cough, which becomes more flowers. Angela helps her clean up as she finally speaks. 'If my love were impossible, thenla doleur exquisewouldn't be eating at my lungs.''Yes, I suppose that is so.'"A story about unrequited love, grief, death, recovery, trauma, flowers, medieval literature and vomit-inducing lung disease.A Mercymaker tale in three parts.





	1. Seed

**Author's Note:**

> A Mercymaker _hanahaki_ fic, inspired by courtly love and a conversation with [NoirSongbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirSongbird) about her own Mercymaker _hanahaki_ story.
> 
> Many thanks to Noir, as well as to my beta readers [Tah the Trickster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TahTheTrickster), [Cadin](http://tracedthroughtime.tumblr.com/), [Renegate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/renegate) and [galactics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galactics/).
> 
> If you are unfamiliar with **_hanahaki_ disease** , a definition is as follows: a fictional disease in which a person suffering from unrequited love begins to cough and/or vomit up flower petals. The disease can only be cured by the affection being returned, or through surgical removal of the flowers, which consequently removes the related feelings. In the fic at hand, _hanahaki_ disease when left untreated is fatal, resulting in eventual collapse of the lungs and suffocation.
> 
> If you are baffled by the medieval literary references, see my end notes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela Ziegler helps a recovering Amélie Lacroix come to term with her emotions, but the onset of an unfortunate illness forces the doctor to come to terms with her own fear of death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are baffled by the medieval literary references, see my end notes.

It’s a warm summer day in Gibraltar, the only respite the salt-kissed breeze blowing in from the Alboran Sea. The wind picks up one fluffy lock of Angela Ziegler’s hair and it drifts into her eyes. Her nose wrinkles. She tugs the hair taut and squints at it. More grey. She’ll need to dye it again soon.

She tucks the strands behind one ear and makes her way across the grounds to the garden. The beds of flowers and vegetables bring an immediate smile to Angela’s face. Gibraltar was ravaged by the Omnic Crisis, and atop its ruins was built the Watchpoint. Now, amidst the Watchpoint’s ruins, there is a beautiful garden.

The sight of it fills her heart with joy, no matter how weary or cynical she might feel. Four hands tend it: two pale white, two periwinkle blue (though growing healthier in colour by the day). It is their project, hers and Amélie’s. It’s an exercise in mindfulness, an indicator of her patient’s progress, and the fruit of a carefully nurtured relationship, both between doctor and patient and between friends.

It is proof that even the most wounded heart can heal. It is proof that Amélie is a woman, not a weapon. It is proof that something other than death can come of her hands.

It is evidence that Angela has corrected at least one of her many mistakes.

Amélie is tending the roses, which have begun to carefully climb the trellis they had built together. Angela pauses to watch her work. The former assassin is certainly aware of Angela’s presence, but she no longer jumps like a startled doe upon attracting attention.

It is one of many symptoms they’ve arduously addressed. The conditioning. The memory loss. The damage to her heart. The loss of her lower legs. The hallucinations, addictions, trauma, hypervigilance, dissociation, flashbacks, nightmares and guilt. Amélie was saddled with a weight that should have crushed her, and yet, miraculously, it hasn't.

Watching her work, Angela is so thankful that Talon failed. Amélie is different, almost unrecognizable, but she is here. And after years of painful work, she is so very close to lasting stability. _Contentment_ is a possibility for her for the first time in a decade.

Sitting in a patch of sunlight, wearing a simple black tank top and khaki capris, a floppy straw sun hat on her head, Amélie is a striking image. Gaunt and gangly and tinted blue, covered in scars and tattoos, she’s far from the image of beauty she once was, but Angela sees a new beauty there.

It’s the beauty of resilience and of rebirth. Amélie is a perennial, springing back after a lean winter. Angela would style her as rose mallow, all sweeping elegance and delicate petals.

Angela’s reverie lasts a little too long, and Amélie apparently grows bored of feigning ignorance. She stands and waves with one dirt-caked hand. _“Bonjour, chérie,”_ she calls. Her voice is not as vibrant as it once was, but a certain warmth has returned to it.

 _“Guten Tag!”_ Angela calls back as she weaves between the plots towards Amélie. “How are our babies doing?”

“Everything is coming in beautifully,” Amélie reports. “The tomatoes ought to be ripe soon. The peonies are looking well, they’ve attracted ants. And look, I found a spider web in the trellis!” Amélie points to a square where a delicate web is occupied by a lone spider.

“Still haven’t regained that fear, I see,” Angela says.

“No,” Amélie replies with a chuckle. “There are some things lost from girlhood that cannot be recovered.”

“Good! That means there’s someone else Lena can call on when there’s a spider in her bunk.” Angela giggles.

Amélie’s lips curl into an impish smirk. “I dare say I’m partly responsible for her fear of spiders. I might just make her panic wor—” She pauses to cough into her closed fist. “—Pardon me.”

Angela gently slaps her wrist. “You’re wicked,” she teases.

“You love it,” Amélie replies with a shake of her hip.

“Perhaps,” Angela demures. She does; seeing her friend laugh and joke again is a balm for her battered heart.

Amélie takes off her sun hat and wipes her glistening brow with her forearm. “The spring rains did our garden good, _non? Qu’est-ce qu’on dit…?_ ‘May showers…?’”

“‘April showers brings May flowers,’” Angela corrects with a nod.

Amélie shrugs, returning the hat to her head. “Of course, how could I forget? Like the General Prologue.” She muses as she casts her gaze across the garden.

Angela arches an eyebrow. “Hm?”

Amélie closes her eyes and begins to recite poetry from memory.

“Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote  
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,  
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,  
Of which vertu engendred is the flour...”

Angela smiles slyly. “Reciting Middle English with a French accent creates quite the effect,” she teases.

Amélie simply opens one eye slightly and casts a sidelong glance at Angela. A smile tugs at her lips as she continues,

“Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth  
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth  
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne  
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,  
And smale fowles maken melodye,  
That slepen al the night with open yë…”

“Enough poetry,” Angela says. “I highly doubt you’ve a hankering for a pilgrimage.”

Amélie laughs. “Me? Never.”

“I swear, it’s a wonder you’ve not worked through the entire library yet.” Angela gives Amélie’s shoulder a playful shove.

The taller woman elbows her back. “Very well,” she says, self-satisfied. “Shall we make tea? Dr. Zhou brought some jasmine tea when she stopped for supplies.”

Angela puts her hands on her hips and shoots Amélie a skeptical look. “Fine, but your check-up immediately after. No weaseling out of it.”

Amélie rolls her eyes and brushes dirt from her hands. “Very well, if we must.”

“Don’t be difficult, Amélie,” Angela chides. “You’re making such good progress. I suspect it won’t be long until you have no use for me.”

For a brief moment Amélie looks wounded, or perhaps a little confused. She coughs again, this time into the crook of her arm. “You are more to me than your ‘use,’” she says defensively.

“Of course, of course!” Angela raises her hands in appeasement. “I simply meant as a doctor.”

Amélie opens her mouth to reply but is interrupted by another cough.

“Are you well, Amélie?” Angela asks, brow furrowing with concern.

“Are you asking as my doctor, or my friend?”

“Both! _Scheiße,_ you stubborn—”

“I’m just being difficult,” Amélie says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s nothing, really. My throat is dry. How about that pot of tea?”

“Yes, yes. Let’s go inside then.” Angela begins to walk towards the central building. “And Amélie,” she continues, “you know you’ll always have me as a friend.”

Some inscrutable mood passes briefly over Amélie’s face like a cloud obscuring the sun. _“Oui, je pense…”_ She trails off as she follows behind Angela. _“...mon amie. Bien sûr.”_

* * *

When Angela first met Amélie Duval, she was smitten from the beginning. It made little difference to her heart that the graceful beauty was draped on Gérard Lacroix’s arm. She’d heard about Amélie from Gérard, of course, and Ana had furnished the woman with a sterling review after the pair had gone shooting together. But nothing could have prepared her for Amélie’s _presence._

She was dazzling. Statuesque and noble in her countenance, and clever as a crow, yet without the pomp Angela was used to seeing from dignitaries and luminaries at Overwatch’s galas. Angela always dressed to the nines for such events, far beyond what she would prefer, and felt extremely awkward. Amélie, on the other hand, seemed so at home in her finery.

Gérard wandered off to play “mediator” in a champagne-fueled argument between Gabriel and Jack. As usual, and as he intended, he would only exacerbate the disagreement to ridiculous ends. Torbjörn and his pregnant wife waltzed together on the dance floor, while Ana and Reinhardt made longing eyes at each other across it.

Angela was left to entertain Amélie, much to her delight. The only thing sweeter than the mere sight of the woman was her company. Angela often dreaded the meaningless chatter of such parties, but Amélie made her forget her anxieties instantly. The alluring dancer was kind and genuine, with a heart so warm that just being near her kept the autumn chill at bay.

They discussed art and politics; whispered in each other’s ears about the behaviour of well-marinated diplomats; and toasted with champagne on the balcony, leaning on the railing and watching Zürich glitter in the fading light. They became fast friends, though the extent of Angela’s desire went far further.

“Everyone has been so welcoming,” Amélie said.

Angela smiled over the lip of her champagne glass. “Well, you’re charming company. It’s a delight to have you with us. Gérard is a lucky man.”

“Please, Angela,” Amélie said with a bashful giggle, “you flatter me.”

“I usually don’t enjoy galas this much,” Angela offered. “You’ve been wonderful.”

 _“Oui, je te comprends._ It keeps you from your work _, n’est-ce pas?”_

“Yes! If only Jack understood!” The champagne was going to Angela’s head now—she was eager and giggly, her voice louder and her cheeks flushed. It was a little embarrassing, but she felt so _good_ that she hardly cared.

Amélie raised her hand to her cherry red lips and giggled again. The pair watched the sea of lights below them and lapsed into silence as they enjoyed the crisp evening air.

“I hope I get to see more of you, Angela. I suspect we’ll be dear friends,” Amélie said abruptly, not removing her gaze from the horizon.

Angela, despite herself, blushed. _“Danke!_ I suspect the same. And I’m certain you will! I mean—it would be my pleasure...” Angela winced internally at her own artlessness.

Amélie turned to her and smiled, something mercurial and private dancing in her olive green eyes. Angela smiled back, shy and tentative.

“Pardon me, doctor, but may I cut in?” Gérard’s voice came from behind them, and Amélie turned to face her partner.

“Gérard! What poor manners you have,” she chided. “You take me to a party and leave your friend to entertain me.”

“I-It was no trouble,” Angela assured.

“See, _mon petite chou?_ I’m sure it was no trouble,” Gérard said. “I had a very important debate to… ahem, _mediate_.” He gave the women a sly wink and twirled his moustache.

Amélie huffed dramatically. “I have half a mind to run off with Angela. The good doctor has a better bedside manner than you, _mon adorée.”_ She stressed the pet name, layering on a sarcastic sweetness.

Angela choked on her champagne, snorting and sputtering inelegantly and drawing light laughter from Amélie and Gérard. She felt her cheeks growing hotter.

“Allow me to make up for it, _ma cocotte,”_ Gérard said, mirroring his lover’s affectation. “May I have this next dance?” He bowed deeply and outstretched his hand towards Amélie.

She took her time considering, leaving Gérard doubled over stiffly, arm extended. “Very well!” she exclaimed finally, taking Gérard’s hand with a smirk.

“It was so good to meet you, Angela,” Amélie called over her shoulder as Gérard lead her inside.

“Do have a good night, doctor,” Gérard said with a wave of his hand. “Don’t drink too much now.”

Angela stood alone on the balcony, gathering her thoughts and steadying her heart, before she slipped away to the ladies' room. She touched up her make-up in the mirror, and carefully adjusted her hair. The only thing on her mind was Amélie.

She coughed once, and then again. She assumed it was the powder she’d applied to her nose.

Returning to the gala, she watched Amélie and Gérard dance from afar.

That night, Gérard proposed. Amélie said yes.

* * *

Amélie has been avoiding her, Angela is certain of it. It’s not unusual for Amélie to curl up in a quiet corner of the Watchpoint and avoid contact; as much as she’s healed, it’s quite easy for her to become overwhelmed or detached. Yet she usually seeks out Angela’s company at least a few times a week.

Angela paces the half-abandoned halls of the Watchpoint, seeking out Amélie not as her doctor, but as her friend. If the ex-sniper is in a low mood, Angela wants to be there for her. Satya and Fareeha are curled up in the garden together, but neither has seen Amélie in days. Amélie’s room is vacant, the bed carefully made but empty.

Angela bumps into a large figure in the hall. “Ah, Winston!"

“Oh! My apologies, Angela,” he says, bowing his head slightly.

“Have you seen Amélie?”

Winston taps his chin in thought. “I don’t believe I have. Is she due for a check-up?”

“No,” Angela says with a nervous smile. “I’m simply… concerned for her. And I suppose I’ve _missed_ her a bit, these past few days.”

“Athena could check up on her,” Winston offers. “Athena!” A nearby panel lights up with the A.I.’s signature icon.

“Yes, Winston?” Athena asks.

“Do you have a loca—”

“—Wait!" Angela interrupts hastily. "...Sorry, Athena, but I don’t like checking up on Amélie like that. I don’t want her to feel monitored, like she was with Talon.”

“I understand,” Athena says. “Have you checked her room?”

“Of course.”

“The garden?”

“Yes.”

“The mess hall?”  
  
“Mmhmm, though she hardly ever eats there.”

“Check the walls and turrets,” Athena suggests. “Amélie is comfortable in high perches. And may I suggest… the library? Like you, she’s quite a reader.”

Angela sighs, taking the hint immediately. “Thank you, Athena. Winston. Sorry to trouble you both.”

“It’s no problem,” Winston says with a warm smile. He gives Angela a friendly pat on the shoulder and lumbers off down the hall.

Amélie is indeed in the library, curled up on a sill in the far corner, reading by the sunlight pouring through the broad windowpanes. Angela hears her coughing before laying eyes on her. Curious and concerned as she is, Angela approaches slowly and quietly, peeking around the stacks towards where Amélie is sitting.

For once Angela gets the jump on her, engrossed as Amélie is in her book. But the element of surprise is lost completely when Angela gasps, hand rising to her mouth, at what she sees beside Amélie.

On the floor beneath the window perch is a pile of used tissues, smeared with flecks of red rose petals. Even if she weren’t a doctor, Angela would immediately recognize it as a sign of _hanahaki_ disease.

“Amélie!”

Amélie nearly jumps out of her skin, dropping her book and reflexively reaching for a weapon that isn’t there. “Angela, you frightened me!” she snaps as she leans down to gather the volume off the floor.

“How long have you been exhibiting symptoms?” Angela demands, drawing closer. She can feel her heart hammering a familiar panicked rhythm in her chest.

Amélie doesn’t respond, and pointedly avoids eye contact. She returns to her thin volume, _Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charrette_ by Chrétien de Troyes as the cover reads, as if she were alone. Angela just storms over and rips the book from Amélie’s grip. Amélie attempts a silent glare, but is interrupted by a fit of coughing.

Angela kneels beside her, handing Amélie a tissue from the nearby box. The other woman hacks until the rose petals in her throat finally pass her windpipe. She spits them into the tissue, and roots around in her mouth with one finger for fragments.

“Amélie,” Angela begins firmly but calmly, taking the soiled tissue from Amélie’s hands. “How long?”

Amélie glances out the window, as if to avoid so much as catching Angela in her peripheral vision. “Weeks now,” she says. “That… day in the garden, you noticed my cough. It started at least a week before. Perhaps two. I thought it was a cold at first…”

Angela listens, trying not to let the suffocating panic in her chest reach her face. Amélie is her patient, and a doctor shouldn’t get so emotional in front of a patient. But their relationship has never been typical, and Amélie is not just any patient. Still, voice level, she asks, “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“I did not want to worry you,” Amélie murmurs.

Angela laughs slightly. “Amélie, it’s no trouble. I’m your doctor.” Her mind begins running logistics. The general timeline for _hanahaki,_ how Amélie’s unique biology might affect it...

“Yes, well… Soon you will simply be my friend, _non?”_

Angela gives her a sour look. “Even as your friend, I’d hope you could come to me.” How would Amélie react to the surgery? Her being in love is a welcome sign, but they would have to deal with it immediately…

“I knew you would not be happy,” Amélie says quietly. She curls up like a dying spider, arms tight around her chest and legs pulled snugly against them. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

Angela laughs again, this time more warmly. Is that all? “Of course I understand,” Angela says. “I’m familiar with _hanahaki,_ of course, and I’ve been in love. I’m here for you, dear.” Angela could do the surgery herself. She’s familiar with the procedure, and the Watchpoint has the equipment…

“No, Angela,” Amélie replies, something distant and hard in her voice, “you don’t understand.” Amélie returns Angela’s gaze, and her eyes are set with cool determination. “I have the disease, yes, but I don’t wish to be cured.”

Angela just blinks, staring up at her friend helplessly. “ _What._ ” It’s a statement more than a question.

“I don’t want the surgery.”

* * *

It wasn’t until nearly a year after Gérard’s proposal that Amélie finally chose her _témoins._ By that time she and Angela were nearly inseparable, best friends joined at the hip, and Angela was doing her best not to play the role of needy puppy.

The nanomachines Angela had incorporated into her biology kept the _hanahaki_ disease at bay, and thus far she had, miraculously, managed to keep it hidden from Amélie. It helped that romance and intimacy were always difficult for Angela. It made it easier to come off as disinterested when she was naturally stiff.

Angela had nipped away from her research for the afternoon to meet her friend for tea. They sat at a table on a sunny boulevard, nursing their cups and chatting. Angela had stopped worrying about makeup or heels when she went to see Amélie; being her comfortable, flannel-clad and messy self was her way of saying ‘I trust you.’

“So, there’s something I wanted to ask you!” Amélie exclaimed abruptly, practically buzzing with pent-up excitement.

“Oh?”

“Will you be one of my witnesses? Gérard and I have been discussing our _témoins,_ and I’ve finally decided!” Amélie let out a delighted squeal. “I want you at my side when we’re married!”

Amélie took Angela's hands in hers and looked up at her plaintively. “Please, _mon amie?”_

Angela squeezed back and forced a smile. “Of course, Amélie! What an honour!” Her face revealed neither the butterflies in her stomach, nor the petals in her chest, nor the breaking of her heart.

 

Angela stood by the altar, feeling more deeply out of place than the night she and Amélie had first met. A Jewish lesbian in a Catholic church watching the woman she loved marry a man who was, quite distinctly, not her. Angela’s smile was as painted on as her lipstick, and she spent much of the ceremony choking back tulip petals as discreetly as possible.

She wondered if this was how Sir Palomides felt, watching Tristan take an adoring Iseult’s hand.

When Amélie and Gérard finally kissed, and continued kissing for what felt like an eternity, Angela came close to vomiting flowers all over the altar. She held it back, stifling a gag into a cough. She spent the last moments of the ceremony idly tonguing at a sour tasting petal that had come up.

During the reception Angela excused herself to the toilet as Gérard and Amélie took to the floor for their dance. She leaned over a toilet and did her best to purge without dirtying her dress.

She vomited until the bowl was full of yellow tulip petals, taking in wheezing breaths between retches. When she began to feel stable, she calmly flushed the toilet, wiped the bile from her mouth and paced over to the sink to wash.

While she scrubbed her hands she fell into a coughing fit, sputtering petals into the sink and her trembling hands. Then the door opened, nearly sending her into a panic. She sucked back a mouthful of petals in surprise, which just made her coughing fit worse.

“Oh, Angela,” Ana said, rushing over to her friend's side. “I thought I'd find you here.”

Angela just coughed until she gagged, and then vomited again, splattering bile and yellow petals all over the counter and sink.

“How long will you let this go on?” Ana asked, gently rubbing Angela's back. “You can't live like this.”

Angela pinched her nose and gathered her breath. Tears streamed down her cheeks from the painful exertion of her heaving, carrying running mascara with them. “I'm just... tired of losing.”

“We all are, dear,” Ana said. “But you can't lose what you never had. It's time to come to terms with it.”

“I have these feelings,” Angela protested, voice cracking. She was uncertain if it was from emotion or a lacerated pharynx. “They're real.”

Ana turned Angela around to look her dead in the eyes. “They are, Angela, but don't surrender your health for them. _I_ for one don't want to lose you. Amélie wouldn't either.”

Angela took a deep breath and let it out as a heavy, shuddering sigh. “...You're right. I know you are, just...” Tears started welling in her eyes, and Ana pulled her into a hug.

Ana cooed softly, as if comforting a child. “I know, _habibti._ But you must. I'll arrange things, don’t you worry.” She broke the embrace and wiped the tears from Angela’s cheeks. “Now, let me help you get cleaned up. You need to try the cake.”

Angela laughed shakily, mostly to vent tension. “You know I love cake.”

With Ana’s help Angela tidied up her make-up, and the pair went back out to the reception. Angela procured a slice of cake and a glass of champagne, letting the sweetness of both rinse the acrid taste from her mouth.

She sat, slowly picking away at her slice, and watched the dance floor. Gérard and Amélie still twirled together; Reinhardt finally asked Ana to dance and the pair stepped out onto the floor; Jack and Gabe were in step for once in spite of the growing tension between them; Oxton, the new pilot whom Gérard had taken a shine to, was dancing with her red-headed plus one.

Angela was never very good at dancing. She knew the steps to the hora and the hustle and even then it was a stretch. Angela was bad at a lot of things, and very, very good at a specific few. She tallied them in her head: medicine, drinking, being alone. She was feeling melodramatic, and didn’t care to resist her bitter thoughts.

The cake, at least, was delicious. Amélie chose her _pâtissier_ well. Angela took some solace in its subtle sweetness, and the light, lemon-kissed frosting. She really did love cake, and this was perhaps the finest cake she’d ever had. She decided to help herself to a second slice once she finished her first.

Later that evening, she vomited both slices up.

* * *

Angela watches the rising sun from one of the Watchpoint's many roofs, smoking a _kretek_ and nursing her mug of coffee. She can count her hours of sleep this week on one hand. At least her coffee is free of Kahlua or _crème de menthe._ She hasn't fallen that far—yet.

She considers praying, but she’s tired of that kind of reflection. When she looks inside herself, she’s frightened and saddened by what she sees.

Today Amélie is scheduled for another check-up. Amélie had resisted them at first. If she is going to die of _hanahaki_ then why track her recovery? “Recovery” is a meaningless term now. But she eventually gave into Angela's pestering.

Angela is quite certain Amélie is doing it for her sake. She stubs out her cigarette and flicks it over the roof's edge.

When Angela knocks on Amélie's door, she finds her patient laying in bed reading. The waste bin by her bed is full of red rose petals and wadded up tissue.

“What are you reading?” Angela asks as she enters with her doctor's bag in hand.

Amélie starts coughing, and hands Angela the book in lieu of speech. She leans over the side of the bed and spits up petals into the bin.

 _“Roman de la Rose?_ You read medieval French?”

Amélie nods and takes a drink of water from a glass beside her bed.

“Didn't Christine de Pizan hate this poem?” Angela asks, returning the book to Amélie.

“Mostly Jean de Meun’s contribution,” Amélie says. “I prefer Guillaume de Lorris’ half anyway.”

“Well, I suppose I've never read either,” Angela says with a laugh.  “You did always outpace me where literature was concerned.” Talking like this almost lets Angela forget that her friend is dying a needless death.

“Yes, well, you're well-read,” Amélie says. “For a scientist.” She smirks. Her lips have gained a frightening new pallor over the past few weeks.

Angela scoffs. “Tch, _artists_.”

Amélie’s eyes settle back on the book of poetry in her hands. “You know, I quite like the idea of courtly love. The bards and Camelot and all that.”

Angela arches her eyebrows. “Oh really? What's that Satya always says to Reinhardt…? ‘How positively medieval’ of you, Amélie,” she teases.

Amélie huffs. “There's wisdom here, as well as literary value,” she says as she caresses the book’s spine with the tips of her fingers. “Courtly love was always something that was, in part, impossible. At best secret, like Guinevere and Lancelot.”

Angela pulls up a chair and seats herself beside Amélie, listening to her friend with concern. “Do you think your love is impossible?”

Amélie laughs, and the laugh turns into a cough, which becomes more flowers. Angela helps her clean up as she finally speaks. “If _my_ love were impossible, then _la doleur exquise_ wouldn't be eating at my lungs.”

“Yes, I suppose that is so.”

“Rather, it's being loved in return that is impossible,” Amélie continues with a sad smile. “Even furtive consummation is little more than a dream.”

Angela takes a deep breath and does her best to remain calm, but she can feel the urge to cry building. The fissures in her professional visage are getting harder to hide. “Don't say that, Amélie,” she says. “Of course you're lovable. I love you, you're my dearest friend!”

Amélie’s expression flattens, and she looks away.

“Is this why you won't tell me who you're in love with? Because you think whomever they are, they’ll never love you back?”

Amélie sighs. “Yes, it is.” She pauses and places her book on the bedside table. “I’m a monster, Angela.”

“Amélie—”

“Enough, Angela,” Amélie interrupts. “You'll tell me I’m not and it will be futile. But I suppose how you struggle, even when it's pointless, is what makes you noble.”

Angela falls silent. She simply leans in and takes Amélie's hand in hers.   

“That's what love is for me,” Amélie continues. “Futile, but ennobling.”

“I… I don't understand,” Angela says. Her lip twitches. She feels as though there is sand sifting between her fingers. Soon she'll be left holding nothing.

“You see, what appeals to me about courtly love…” Amélie begins. “They saw love as a wound. Your love’s beauty would pierce your eye like an arrow and wounds your heart. They understood the pain of it.”

“Surely love is more than pain, isn’t it?”

Amélie smiles knowingly. _“Bien sûr!_ It’s not just that image that I adore, but… their ethos of love. One struggles with it, resists it virtuously then gives into its pursuit. Love is characterized by feverish desire—it is an illness, almost. They must have had an intuitive understanding of _hanahaki, non?”_

Angela feels at a loss. “Yes, I suppose,” she says, eyes searching Amélie’s face for some line of logic Angela feels she’s missing. “I did read medieval treatises on _hanahaki_ during my undergraduate, by Paracelsus and the like…”

Amélie pauses to cough, and Angela catches the flowers in a tissue and throws them in the bin. When Amélie is ready to speak again, there’s a fiery passion in her eyes that Angela finds disturbing.

“What I love about it,” Amélie says, picking up the thread, “is that one suffers and endures for love. A love that was expected never to be public, even if consummated. Like Guinevere and Lancelot! Lancelot’s love is praiseworthy, I believe. I feel as though chivalric love describes a certain… alchemy within the lover.”

Angela stares at her blankly.

Amélie smiles, her excitement rising with the pace of her speech as she explains. “It’s an ennoblement of the spirit! It raises the person higher! In _loving,_ one becomes divine. As if loving could refine the human spirit to its apex.”

It sounds absurd to Angela, and her confusion only upsets her further. She can feel the tears welling in her eyes. “What are you getting at…?”

“It’s like _La Belle et la Bête,_ only it’s not being loved that turns the beast into a prince. It’s the _act_ of loving.” Amélie smiles with satisfaction at her conclusion and takes a deep breath. The pace of her speech had almost winded her.

Oh. “You think if you let yourself die of _hanahaki…_ it will… retroactively validate your existence? Justify you? Make you a woman again, not…” Angela pieces the logic together bit by bit, trying to follow the winding trail of Amélie’s statements.

“I have lived as a beast too long,” Amélie says, voice choked with emotion. Tears are welling in her eyes now, and they begin to spill down her cheeks. “Even my ‘recovery,’ I feel as though all I achieved was some bare survival. But I can _love,_ Angela… I can love! I would rather die as a woman than keeping living as… a spider.”

Angela can feel hot tears spilling down her own cheeks. “I think I prefer Chaucer,” she jokes weakly. _“The Wife of Bath._ The woman's beauty is revealed when she's given choice.”

“This is _my_ choice,” Amélie says, squeezing Angela’s hands in her own. “I know it’s hard, but please accept it—”

“But that’s insane, Amélie!” Angela breaks in so sharply that Amélie’s eyes go wide in astonishment. “I… Pardon me.” She takes a deep breath and levels her tone. “I can perform the surgery, and you can fall in love again! You don’t… You don’t have to...”

“Sssh, _chérie,”_ Amélie whispers. “I’m predisposed to _hanahaki._ I’ve had the surgery before. Talon forced it upon me. The disease… no, _love itself_ interfered with my conditioning. They stole away love I had for Sombra first, and then for Lena. Each time I was left… empty. The love never returned.”

“This _isn’t_ Talon, Amélie!” Her rebuttals are sounding more and more like pleas.

Amélie just laughs wryly. _“Je comprends, mon amie,”_ she says softly. “But as I said, no one will ever love a monster like myself. Not truly. Not intimately. And it’s for the better. Lovers and friends alike turn out worse for having loved me. Ana…”

“Ana has forgiven you!” Angela rebutts.

Amelie pauses briefly. “...Gérard.”

That is enough to disarm Angela completely. She just sobs helplessly, pleading with Amélie out of sheer desperation. “Amélie… Amélie, please!”

“If my choice is to die full of love, or to live having my love taken from me over and over, I will choose the former,” Amélie says calmly. “Please understand, Angela.”

Angela buries her face in Amélie’s sheets and weeps.

“Please understand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and questions welcome. 
> 
> Follow me on tumblr at [galpalgadot](https://galpalgadot.tumblr.com/).
> 
>  
> 
> References:
> 
>  
> 
>  **Scene 1:** The text which Amélie recites is the very beginning of the General Prologue of Chaucer's _The Canterbury Tales_. Translated into modern English, it reads:
> 
> "When April with its sweet-smelling showers  
> Has pierced the drought of March to the root,  
> And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid  
> By which power the flower is created;  
> When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,  
> In every wood and field has breathed life into  
> The tender new leaves, and the young sun  
> Has run half its course in Aries [ _early-mid April_ ],  
> And small fowls [ _nightingales_ ] make melody,  
> Those that sleep all the night with open eyes"
> 
> Translation [source](https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/gp-par.htm).
> 
>  **Scene 3:** _Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charrette_ ( _Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart_ ) is an Arthurian romance by Chrétien de Troyes, which details Lancelot's quest to rescue his lover Guinevere, who is King Arthur's Queen, as well as the couple's romance and affair. The full text can be found [here](http://omacl.org/Lancelot/).
> 
>  **Scene 4:** Palomides was a Muslim knight of the Round Table who vied with Tristan for the love of Iseult. Though a capable knight, he was bested by Tristan in skill and in Iseult's heart. For more on him, see [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palamedes_\(Arthurian_legend\)).
> 
>  **Scene 5:** The _Roman de la Rose_ ( _Romance of the Rose_ ) is a medieval poem in the form of a dream vision. It was started by Guillaume de Lorris and finished decades later by Jean de Meun. It instructs on courtly romance. For more on the poem, see [here](http://romandelarose.org/#rose) or check wikipedia.
> 
> Christine de Pizan was a 15th century late medieval author and poet who considered Jean de Meun's _Roman de la Rose_ to be immoral.
> 
>  _La Belle et la Bête_ is, of course, the French for "The Beauty and the Beast."  
>   
>  In _The Canterbury Tales,_ there is a story named _The Wife of Bath's Tale_. It asks the question, "what is it that women most desire?" At the end a hag whom a knight marries says he can choose to have her be beautiful by day and hideous by night, or vice versa. When the knight tells her the choice is hers, she becomes a beautiful, young maiden permanently and they live together happily. A synopsis can be found on [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wife_of_Bath%27s_Tale) and the full text with interlinear translation can be found [here](https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/wbt-par.htm).  
> 


	2. Blossom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Amélie's condition worsens, Angela struggles to accept her friend and patient's decision to die with love in her heart. Because healing is often a painful process, and being open to love requires that one is just as open to loss.
> 
> Amélie, meanwhile, continues to work her way through the medieval literary canon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been months but "Rose Blossom Heart" is finally completed. Instead of 2 chapters it's now 3, the last being a short epilogue. Thank you to my readers for your patience.
> 
> Please note that the following chapter is intense and contains allusions to suicide, alcoholism, death and terminal illness. It often gets worse before it gets better, but it does get better, even if 'better' doesn't look like you might hope or imagine.
> 
> Many thanks to [NoirSongbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirSongbird), [Renegate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/renegate) and especially [Tah the Trickster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TahTheTrickster) for their exceptional beta-ing work, and thank you to my readers for waiting four months on an awful cliff hanger. I hope the end result is worth it.
> 
> Once again, the end notes explain the medieval literary (and other) references.

There are many ways one can cope with grief, some healthier than others. Angela has nurtured a few in her years on Earth. All she wants right now is the bottle—she can’t stop imagining how good it would feel to fall into that black oblivion—but she won’t waver, not while Amélie is alive to see it. That can wait until after she’s gone, and she’s left alone with loss.

_ After she’s gone.  _ God, to think like that. Angela’s other go-to has been throwing herself into her work, and she has, but that work feels as if it’s taking on a new meaning now. Her goal has been unerring since she was a young orphan, obsessively reading whatever medical journals and volumes she could get her hands on.

Her desire was to conquer death, to ensure that no one would suffer as she suffered. It was, in part, to ensure that  _ she _ would be safe from any further burden of grief. Even as she has lost, and lost, and lost she has never abandoned that stubborn conviction. Even when it’s proven itself to be hybristic in the extreme, all she’s wanted is to put a moratorium on pain and loss.

When she threw herself into her work in the past, it was towards that goal. If not improving her nanomachines or pioneering more effective surgical techniques, it was saving as many lives as she could. She’d put as a big a dent in the Reaper’s harvest as she was able.

But now Amélie is asking her to accept that death is a fact—that Amélie herself is going to die. Every instinct in Angela’s body rages against it, but she knows that such acceptance is necessary, and long overdue.

Hence her uneasy settling into the work of hospice care. She threw the rest of her waking hours  into working tirelessly for Overwatch. It’s funny; she’d answered the Recall for Amélie’s sake, and yet assisting the clandestine organization has become a welcome respite from the loss that waits around the bend. She even dons the Valkyrie suit these days, something she’d sworn to Winston she wouldn’t do again.

For lack of anything better to do, Angela spent the previous night researching improvements to the Valkyrie technology. And, as usual, she’d pushed herself to her body’s limits. Hence, she dozes at her desk, face down in a pile of papers.

She thinks she dreams of Amélie, though she can’t quite remember as she awakens to the startling sound of a ragged cough. She sits bolt upright, shouting out of reflex.  _ “Ich bin wach! Ich bin…  _ Oh, Amélie. I’m so sorry, you startled me.” 

Amelie, completely unfazed, simply sets a mug of fragrant Earl Grey on the desk in front of Angela and smiles weakly. “This damned cough, it’s hard to be sneaky,” she quips. “Worse than those prosthetic heels Talon had me in.”

Angela rubs the sleep from her eyes as she rises to unsteady feet. “You should be in bed, dear,” she murmurs with a glance at her watch. “God, it’s six in the morning.”

Amélie gives a chuckle that sounds more like a wheeze. “Trouble sleeping,” Amélie says, leaning against the cane she’s taken to using when she needs to walk, “It was elusive before, and  _ mes fleurs  _ have hardly helped.”

Angela gives her friend a strained smile. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to the casual way in which Amélie refers to her disease. “Let’s get you back to your room…” Angela is still gathering her bearings, trying to tear down the strange film that seems to settle over the world as one transitions from sleeping to waking. “The tea… Is that for me?”

Amélie nods and avoids Angela’s gaze, her laboured breathing giving way to a coughing fit, and a spume of saliva and petals she hacks into a red kerchief. 

Angela, for her part, stares at the tea, her mind slowly putting two and two together. She often woke at her desk to a mug of the same Earl Grey on nights when she overworked. It's Lena’s favourite, and she’d always assumed the cheerful agent to be behind the furtive gifts. 

Angela puts a hand on her Amélie’s shoulder. “Amélie… Thank you.”

Amélie begins to hobble towards the door. “Yes, well…  _ Ce n’est rien. _ ”

“Well, thank you… And let me help you,” Angela says, rushing to her friend's side and slinging her arm around Amélie’s shoulders. They slowly start to pick their way towards Amélie’s quarters.

They walk in silence, nothing but the tap of Amélie’s cane and the occasional bout of hacking coughs. Angela would scold Amélie—physical exertion at this stage in the illness is far from recommended—but she knows it has no influence on the stubborn woman.

After a time, Angela can no longer contain her curiosity. “Why did you never tell me you were behind those phantom mugs of tea?”

Amélie grimaces and remains silent, as if quietly pondering whether to even respond. “I suppose I dislike the attention. I do similar for others. Leave ibuprofen on Ana’s desk when she’s having migraines—which she thinks is your doing. Bring Satya flowers on occasion. I think she takes them to be from Fareeha. They do exchange flowers as lovers’ tokens. And so on.”

Angela gives her a bemused look. “And you go to the trouble of doing it secretly because you dislike attention?”

Amélie grunts, though it might be a weak laugh. “If you all knew it was me, I wouldn’t do it. Athena knows, but keeps my secrets. And doesn’t judge. I simply don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to come off as good… I shouldn’t have to meet their standards.” Her tone is dispassionate, level and cool in a way with which Angela has become intimately familiar. She always adopts it when she’s hiding vulnerability. “...Or I don’t want to feel as if I must,” she adds softly.

“I think I understand,” Angela murmurs. She’s again struck by what a magnificent woman Amélie is, even now. Especially now.  _ God, I don’t want to lose her! _ she thinks. Amélie nods and stumbles. Angela holds her steady as she vomits up petals in a corner of the Watchpoint hallway. “I’ll come back and clean it up, don’t worry,” Angela assures her.

“Mmm,  _ merci,” _ Amélie grumbles. “As far as my little acts of charity… I suppose I take quiet joy in helping those for whom I care.” Her lips curl into a soft smile, so genuine and warm in spite of the sweat rolling down her brow and the sickness eating at her lungs. “I spent so long unable to care. It’s its own joy… One that is solely mine.”

“You’re quite a spectacular woman, Amélie…” Angela squeezes Amélie’s shoulder. 

Amélie lets out a bitter little laugh. “I know, I have one of the highest confirmed kill counts of any sniper in history.” 

“Oh hush,” Angela says with a roll of her eyes. “You’re loving in your own way, I mean. It’s charming.”

A cobalt hue rises to Amélie’s cheeks.  _ “M-Merci,” _ she stammers. “...This is why I prefer to be quiet about it. I have no idea how to act anymore, when a woman is… appreciative, towards me.”  
  


They finally arrive at Amélie’s room, and Angela helps her into bed. She props the cane against the bedside and tucks Amélie in. “Do try to sleep more, won’t you?”  
  
Amélie smiles weakly. “I’d like to read a little first. Could you get that book from my desk?”

Angela paces over and picks up the thick volume— _ Le Mort d’Arthur _ by Sir Thomas Malory—and brings it over to Amélie. 

“I’m going to positively loathe medieval literature because of you,” Angela says dryly.

Amélie just gives her the best impish smirk she can muster. “Your loss.”

“Still fawning over Lancelot and Guinevere?” Angela asks, sitting on the edge of the bed.

_ “Un peut,”  _ Amélie says as she opens the book to the page she’d dog-eared. “I’m quite enjoying Iseult and Tristram’s moments as well.”

“You know, Lancelot’s affair with the queen is what causes the dissolution of Camelot,” Angela continues.

Amélie gives her a little glare. “Of course, but still… There’s something wonderful about their love. I can’t help but be enchanted by its strength. Love that can fell a kingdom must certainly be something,  _ non?” _

“Yes, I suppose it must be,” Angela says with a sigh. “If you're Lancelot, does that mean your death will be the second fall of Overwatch?”

“Hardly, my Guinevere would need to love me back.”

“And she is…?” 

Amélie mouth presses into a hard line, her eyes remaining as mercurial as ever.

“Anyway,” Angela says, returning the subject to its main track, “such love is powerful, but does that make it admirable?”

Amélie taps her fingers on the book’s cover and ponders the question for a moment. “I suppose I like its tragedy…” she says. “A love so genuine, but ill-fated. That seems to be the way of the world,  _ non?” _

Angela’s face falls. She can’t say she doesn’t understand Amélie’s way of thinking. “Sometimes that does seem to be the world we live in, yes. But it doesn't have to be, does it? Can't love be something better? Healing, even?” Sometimes Angela feels her optimism might be rooted in willful ignorance, but she continues hoping regardless.

Amélie raises one eyebrow. “I'm not sure my love could ever be anything but toxic,” she murmurs.

Angela sighs. As much as she's accustomed to such pronouncements, they never grow easier to hear. “Those cups of tea you brought me weren't poisoned, were they?” she quips.

It falls flat. Amélie looks away, something pained on her face beyond the flowers in her lungs. She starts coughing and quickly grabs a tissue to catch the ensuing petals. Angela's chest tightens. It had taken too long for the possibility to even occur to her, but recently she finds herself wondering if _she_ is the source of Amélie's affliction.

Amélie picks up the book and continues reading. They fall into an uncomfortable silence, Angela remaining seated at the foot of Amélie's bed as her patient reads.

“Anyway,” Angela says, backtracking in the hopes of breaking the discomfiting silence, “isn't the lesson of Lancelot and Guinevere supposed to be about fidelity?”

_ “Fidelty?”  _ Amélie repeats incredulously. “Angela… I killed my husband.” Her grip on the book tightens, and her level gaze fails to disguise the sorrow in her eyes.

Angela opens her mouth and closes it, tearing her own gaze away from Amélie's as she feels tears begin to prick at the corner of her eyes. When she glances back, Amélie's eyes are glued to her book, but her grip hasn't loosened.

The pair remain still and quiet, so lost in their own oceans of grief that they can hardly look at one another, let alone speak.

“Get some rest,  _ hartse.  _ You need to keep your health up,” Angela finally says as she stands.

“Do I?”

Angela thrusts her hands into the pockets of her lab coat and freezes, unable to muster a response.

The room is so quiet that Angela can hear Amélie dog ear a new page and slowly close the book. “You’re not ready, are you?” she asks.

“I’m so sorry, Amélie,” Angela replies. “But no, I’m not.”

* * *

It was weeks after the wedding. Amélie and Gérard were honeymooning in the Caribbean. Frequent messages from the newly minted bride to Angela indicated that they were having a wonderful time. Angela closed the most recent and then placed her phone on the table by her hospital bed.

Ana took her hand and squeezed it. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Angela replied with a weak smile.

The surgeon rapped on the door and enters. “Captain Amari, Dr. Ziegler,” he greeted with a slight nod as he made his way to the foot of Angela’s bed. “This is short notice, but I understand the desire for secrecy. The operating theatre will be prepped shorty. We’ll have you in and the flowers out in a few hours.”

“Thank you for the favour, doctor,” Ana said.

The surgeon shrugged. “Guess this makes us even now, Amari.”

Angela pulled her hand free of Ana’s and knitted her fingers together.

“As a medical professional yourself, I’m sure you’re familiar,” the surgeon continued, “but the surgery is reasonably safe, beyond the risks entailed by any surgical procedure. Once the petals are removed, the associated affect should disappear immediately.”

Angela nodded in understanding.

“Any questions?” he asked.

“Just one,” Angela said. “You know better than I… Is…” She sighed and gathered her thoughts. “Well… Is it true that it will be impossible for me to develop these feelings again? I mean… for her, specifically.”

“It’s not unheard of for patients to develop the disease again over the same object, but it’s incredibly rare,” the surgeon said. “While the common line about ‘love, once removed, never returns’ isn’t strictly true, it’s how things play out in the vast majority of patients.”

Angela nodded. There was a flutter in her chest. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her love for Amélie, but she knew she had no choice.

Ana watched her closely, studying the worry in her face. “It’s for the best, Angela,” she whispered. “It’s difficult, but it’s for the best.”

Angela nodded once more, but didn’t say a word.  
  


The surgery was a success. As the doctor had predicted, the feelings never returned, as much as Angela sometimes wished they would. She and Amélie remained joined at the hip as friends, but as warm as her feelings for Amélie were, the butterfly flutter of  _ eros _ never returned.

Years later, Angela sat in Ana’s office in Overwatch HQ and listened numbly to the details of Gérard Lacroix’s death.

“...found Gérard’s body. Amélie is… Well, Amélie is missing. We suspect whatever Talon agents killed Gérard abducted her again. We have investigators working…”  
  
Ana assured her that they would do everything in their power to locate Amélie, but something deep in Angela’s gut told her Amélie was already gone.

The whole incident felt surreal, as if all Angela needed was a pinch and she’d wake up in bed. She clutched the Star of David hanging around her neck so tightly that it’s edges punctured her palm. She didn’t even realize until fifteen minutes later, when she noticed the tips dotted with blood.

Jack had given her the rest of the day—and as long as she needed—off, but she simply returned to her lab and picked up her research where she’d left off. The trip home passed by a liquor store and she didn’t need any more excuse to break her seven months of sobriety.

She would have liked Ana’s company, but the Second-in-Command had a great deal to take care of before she had the luxury of mourning. And Ana had always been one to mourn or worry privately. Angela supposed it made sense. She couldn’t imagine the reservoir of grief Ana must have accumulated in her long career. Opening those doors would be like throwing wide the floodgates of the heavens.

So Angela worked, and did her best to keep her own floodgates battened shut. Yet in spite of herself she found herself wondering what the loss would feel like had she eschewed the surgery. It was a strange feeling: an absence within an absence, a loss layered atop a loss. 

She’d lost Amélie, twice over. And strangely, she found herself wishing it hurt more.

* * *

“Angela, please,” Amélie interrupts. “I’ll be fine. You’re only gone a couple days.”

Angela wrings her hands nervously. In Amélie’s bedridden state, a couple days can carry significant import. A couple days can be the distance from here to the grave. Angela chuckled internally at the comparison. How cruelly  _ apropos _ would it be for Amélie to die while Angela was visiting her parents’ graves?

“Yes, of course,” Angela says. “And you know, if you feel your condition worsen—”

Angela pauses to allow Amélie a coughing fit, that quickly escalates into vomiting rose petals and bile into a shallow receptacle. Angela takes it from Amélie gently as her patient falls back heavily against the bed’s pillows. Amelie draws in wheezing, laborious breaths and closes her eyes.

Angela puts the pan aside and grabs an oxygen mask, and pressing it over Amélie’s mouth and turning on the flow of oxygen. “There, there,” she whispers, “just breathe.” She holds it there until Amélie takes it in her own shaking fingers and holds it still.

“As I was saying,” Angela softly continues, “if you notice it getting worse…”

“...I can call for Winston or Ana,” Amélie finishes, voice muffled by the mask. “I know. Athena is monitoring me as well. And Satya agreed to read to me. I’ll be  _ fine.” _

Angela sighs. “Yes, I know. I know I’m being a bother but I want to be with you, when... it happens,” she says.

“ _ Moi aussi, chérie,”  _ Amélie says, opening her eyes slightly. “You will be. Now let me rest. Catch your train. See your parents.”

Angela smiles weakly.

“Tell them I say ‘hello,’” Amélie jokes. “Though I suppose I’ll meet them soon enough.”

Angela’s already weak smile falters. She’s doing the work, trying to accept Amélie’s decision. Too often she refused to let go when she ought to—with Genji, and with Gabriel—and it’s come back to bite her. She won't make that mistake with her friend.

Still, that doesn't make Amélie’s gallows humour easy to digest.

“I’ll see you soon,” Angela says and lightly touches Amélie’s hand. 

As she makes for the door, Amélie calls after her, as loudly as her weak voice can muster. “Angela!”

Angela turns. “Yes?”

_ “Merci,” _ she says. “I know this is hard for you.”

“Yes, well, I love you, Amélie,” Angela says. “If it’s your decision, then… I will be by your side until the end.”

The words “I love you” cause a shadow to pass over Amélie’s expression. Angela’s suspicion that she's the object of Amelie's affection creeps back into her heart like ivy across pre-war brick. She’s considered telling Amélie about her own surgery, why she could never return such love and how it has nothing to do with Amelie, just in case. But every time, something nameless creeps up her throat and hems the words in her mouth. She’s uncertain if it’s fear or sheer cowardice.

Part of her feels unworthy of Amélie’s affection. She was broken young and has remained broken since. She failed Gabriel and Genji, and Amélie once already. Her friend deserves love, without a doubt, but from someone warm and whole. Angela hasn’t been good at love—not for a very long time. 

Worse, Amélie is even more bullheaded now than she was before Talon. Even if Angela told her the truth, the incorrigible woman would likely still stay her stubborn path. Angela wants to say something, to find out if it might make a difference, but the fear that it might not suffocates her. She can’t imagine failing Amélie a second time, for good.

She wouldn’t be able to live with herself. She’s barely able as is. So quietly, weakly, fearfully, she chooses silence and denial.

_ “Merci,” _ Amélie repeats. “When I’m gone, keep caring for our garden. Bring me flowers, like you do your parents.”

“I will, Amélie,” Angela replies. “I’ll see you in a couple days. Rest up now.”  
  


The weather in Zürich is overcast as Angela places a bundle of lilac blossoms on her parents grave. The  _ Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zürich’s _ Upper Friesenberg cemetery is quiet, Angela’s only company the imposing presence of Uetliberg mountain. 

Lilac was her mother’s favorite plant. She still dimly recalls her mother’s story about her father presenting her with a sprig of it on their first date. The lilacs themselves are from the Watchpoint. Amélie and Angela had planned their garden around a lilac tree that they had found growing wild in a spacious courtyard.

Angela looks around one last time to guarantee that she's alone before speaking to her parent’s tombstone.

“Hi  _ mame _ , hi  _ tate _ ,” she begins in German. “I know I haven’t visited in almost a year. No! A year now. Since your last  _ Yahrzeit.  _ I’m a bad daughter, aren’t I?” She chuckles and tugs her trench coat closely around her.

“I’ve been busy. Not in a bad way. I’m still sober. I just… I have a patient and she’s not really like any other I’ve ever had, I guess. She’s kept me busy, and well… She’s maybe my closest friend. And she’s dying.”

Angela sits on the grass, back against the cold stone, and tugs her knees close to her chest. She would cry, as she typically does on the anniversary of her parent’s death, but at this point she feels all cried out. Perhaps that’s a good sign, a sign that she’s healing, that she can visit the cemetery without weeping.

“She wants me to let go. But you know I'm very bad at that. Ever since you…” She feels the faint beginnings of a cry coming on, nascent tears pricking the corners of her eyes and jaw locking reflexively. “...you left a hole and I can't fill it.”

She pictures the space that loss has hollowed out of her, gaping like a wound in her chest. In her mind it's dark and empty, a terrible negative space that grows larger and larger with everyone she loses. As skilled a healer as she is, she's never been able to sew it up. Perhaps she can't.

“Gabriel always told me, ‘Angela, fighting Death is a losing battle.’ It hasn’t stopped me from trying.” She laughs bitterly and rubs away the few tears that have gathered at the corners of her eyes. “But ‘heroes never die’ has hardly served me well as a philosophy. It certainly didn't serve me with Gabe, and I can't correct that…”

But she can try not to make that same mistake a second time.

She hums to herself and presses her back against the stone. She can feel its cool, resolute presence through her coat and button-up. It's a far cry from the warm, parental embrace she's craved for decades now. It almost reminds her of Amélie.

Ultimately, she knows what she has to do. She doesn't like it, but she knows. 

“She wants me to let go, to be able to say goodbye… To lose and accept it. I don't know how, I don't want to, but I'm trying.” Angela feels something hard and uncomfortable settle in her gut. “Maybe 'heroes never die’ can mean they live on in my memory. That I never forget them. That I… Oh, I don't know. Carry their torch.” She shrugs her shoulders.

The words feel fake, like a lie one tells oneself when the truth is too much to bear. The dead don't talk back. The dead don't take your hand and squeeze it. The dead don't plant roses or read chivalric literature.

Maybe if she does let go, the emptiness will remain, but without the vain hope that she might be able to do anything about it—that she might be able to protect herself and those she loves from that pain. Perhaps it will, but she knows she has to try.

“I'm going to do my best mom, dad,” she says. “I'm going to be brave. It's what she's asked, and she gets to choose. I won't take that from her.” She pauses, watches as a chill wind scatters a few errant leaves. “...At least, I’ll try.”

Angela sits there in the grass, back against the cold stone, and simply talks; she talks about her research, the events of the past year. She speaks about Amélie at length. A sick weight settles in her gut and doesn’t leave during the hour she spends at the grave. It's discomforting, but all she knows she needs to sit with it. She knows full well that discomfort is where the healing happens.

If it happens at all.

* * *

Angela was exhausted as she shuffled around the Watchpoint's gloomy kitchen preparing herself a mug of tea. The one part of the kitchen that didn't feel woefully understocked was the tea cupboard. Genji, Satya, Lena and Mei all replenished the stock with their favorites as they came and went.

Angela was deeply thankful for Fareeha and Jesse’s company. Without them she'd be Gibraltar's lone coffee addict. 

Angela plucked the chamomile tea bag (Lena's contribution, she recalled) from the steaming mug and dropped it in the compost. 

The months since Amélie's arrival had not been easy. At first she was excited to discover that her friend was still alive, and that something could be done to help her. But seeing what Talon had done to her wasn't easy, and Angela had to maintain the proper comportment of a professional.

Adding to things was how difficult her new patient had proven to be. Amélie worked against Angela more than she worked with her, and the transition from Talon to Overwatch had been difficult.

The documents and assistance Sombra provided made things easier—elided the need for research on the cause of Amélie's condition—but the patient's disgruntled and recalcitrant attitude, while understandable, did neither her nor her doctor any favours.

It was only later that Angela would discover Amélie had been difficult, in part, out of shame. And that Angela would tell her, “I knew you then and I know you now, and I care for you all the same.”

Angela decided to pass through the courtyard with the lilacs on the way to her quarters. The bush reminded her of her mother, and she would often sit beneath its branches with coffee and a clove cigarette and think about her patient.

Lately, and unsurprisingly, the difficulty had been with emotion. Even with Talon’s chemical butchery of her partially undone, Amélie spent a great deal of time dissociating, often to the point of derealization. At least she no longer drifted into fugue states at random. Still, the progress they had made had been hard won.

Passing into the grassy courtyard, Angela's attention was caught by the sudden rustle of vegetation. She cautiously approached the lilac bush, only to find Amélie curled up at its base.

Angela could feel her heart skip a beat. “Amélie!” she shouted.  _ Is she wounded? Ill? She looks pained!  _ Angela’s mug and unlit cigarette fell to the ground as the doctor rushed to her patient’s side.

“Stay away!” Amélie cried, lashing out at the doctor and awkwardly scrambling away across the grass.

Angela huffed. She was not in the mood. “Amélie, if you’re not well just—just let me help!” Similar words had left Angela’s mouth numerous times before, but they had yet to find purchase. Amélie remained as stubborn as ever. 

“Why won’t you let me help you?” Irritable, Angela rushed after Amélie and grabbed her patient by the shoulder, jerking her around so they were face to face.  _ “Scheiße! _ Just ta—” But seeing Amélie’s face left her speechless. “Amélie… You’re crying…”

“Obviously!” Amélie snapped, pulling her arm free of Angela’s grip and covering her face with her hands. “It’s bad enough without you seeing,” she mumbled through her hands and between sobs.

“Amélie! This is fantastic!” Angela squealed with glee, dropping to her knees besides the crying woman.

“What’s fantastic about it?” Amélie snapped back, curling her knees up to her chest. Her body visibly quivered. “It’s humiliating.”

“This is the first I’ve seen you cry.”

“It’s the first time I’ve cried,” Amélie grumbled. She angled herself away from Angela, but seemed more amenable to the doctor’s presence. “But it won’t stop.”

Angela smiled softly. “You’ve been in dire need of a cry for a while now, hmm?” 

Amélie scoffed. “If this is ‘feeling,’ I think I’d rather not.”

Angela chuckled, pulling a few tissues from her pocket. “Here,  _ sperling, _ they’re clean,” she said, offering them to Amélie. “And you should be proud. This is such a big step for you.”

_“Proud?_ Tch!” Amélie removed her hands from her face and glared at Angela with reddened eyes. “Why should I be proud? I’m mewling like an infant.”

Angela gestured with the tissues again, holding them out to Amélie while holding the woman’s gaze with as gentle a look as she could muster. “After what Talon put you through, what could be a more incredible feat than crying? _ I’m  _ certainly proud of you, dear.”

Periwinkle fingers reached tentatively forth for the tissues, plucking them from Angela’s hand and dabbing the tears rolling down Amélie’s cheeks.  _ “Trop naïve, _ Angela,” she sniffled. Her tears seemed to be abating now, and the tremors shaking her body were easing.

“And what’s naive about it?” Angela retorted, crossing her arms over her chest and giving Amélie a playful smirk.

“Emotions make you vulnerable,” Amélie murmured. “What I’m feeling is just… A suffering that opens me to more suffering. I made that mistake once. If I’d just—If he hadn’t loved—!” She choked on her words as the floodgates opened again and she let out an anguished sob.

“Amélie…” Angela could feel her heart breaking. She shuffled over beside Amélie and extended one arm, as if to embrace her patient. “Would it be okay if I put my arm around you?”

Amélie just nodded as she buried her face in her hands again, nails digging into her scalp as she shook with the violence of her wailing.

Angela wrapped one arm around Amélie’s shoulders, and rested the other on the woman’s knee. “You made each other so happy, Amélie. You aren’t to blame. Talon is.”   
  
“No one believes that!” Amélie shouted. “The way—the way you all look at me! I-If I didn’t deserve it before they took me, I deserved… I deserved it after!” Her ranting was interrupted by fresh peals of keening and sobs.

It felt like a knife digging into Angela’s heart, and for a moment she no longer felt like a doctor with a very strange patient. She remembered what it felt like to be with Amélie, friend to friend; what it meant to love this woman passionately, even when it hurt. And all she wanted was to assuage Amélie’s pain.

Angela’s hand rose from Amélie’s knee to her patient’s cheek, forcing Amélie’s head up. She locked Amélie with her gaze, utterly firm and resolute. “You never deserved  _ any _ of this, Amélie,” Angela whispered, her own voice quivering with barely contained emotion. “And may God strike me blind if I look at you with anything other than compassion.”

Amélie’s eyes were wide as saucers, staring back in surprise at Angela’s sudden firm and intimate gesture. Her lip quivered, and tears rolled down her cheeks, but she remained quiet, watching Angela in awe.

“No matter how hard it’s been, I would  _ never _ give up the love and care I have for you,” Angela continued. “You were my friend, Amélie. I hope you will be again, someday. Though that matters less to me than you being well…” She let go of Amélie’s cheek and pulled back a bit, suddenly aware of how familiar she’d gotten.

She cleared her throat awkwardly, and glanced away. “You’ve never been evil, Amélie, just very, very hurt. And to let yourself _feel—_ especially after what you’ve been through—is a sign of strength beyond what those bastards at Talon could even imagine.” She paused and took a deep breath, nervous eyes returning to Amélie’s face. “So I’m proud of you, and I’m with you. This is an important step, Amélie. I promise, we’ll get you better.”

Amélie sniffled and nodded. “P-Proud of me! How absurd,” she grumbled again before breaking down into another sob. “A-Angela,” she started tentatively as her latest deluge of tears abated, “could you… Could you hold me again?”Angela smiled slightly. “Of course, dear.” She wrapped Amélie up in her arms, and her patient—no, her friend—nestled into her breast and wept against the soft black turtleneck Angela was wearing.    

It was difficult, yes, but Angela suddenly realized she was so happy. It was messy and awkward and Amélie was so far from done, but she was  _ healing _ . Angela had seen enough of healing to know it when she saw it. People often expected healing to be beautiful, tranquil and graceful. They wanted it to be picturesque. After the pain of being wounded, that’s a reasonable demand.

But that’s not healing. Healing is an ugly, wretched and terrible thing. Angela had guided enough patients through it, and done enough healing on her own. And, of course, she knew she had a great deal more of both to endure before she died. She wished, so very much, that it could be simple and painless, but it wasn't.

Healing is reopening a wound with your bare hands and stitching it up, slowly and arduously pressing needle through flesh over and over. Healing is expunging all the nightmares you’ve lived through from your body, vomiting up the pain and venting it from every pore. Healing is rebuilding your foundations from rubble and needing to believe, without proof, that something will stand there again one day.

Angela knew healing all too well. She knew healing could be swallowing a dozen pills and blacking out, then being so thankful for another chance when she finally woke up. She knew that healing could be staring at a wine bottle and wanting so badly to dive into it but resisting the urge, as much as it might tempt her.

Healing is ugly, and that’s why it’s so beautiful.

Because healing is a wounded heart reknitting. Healing is a singular human life, that has endured more Hell than it should ever have to witness, finding a way to be okay with and beyond the pain. It is taking a terrible trauma, and placing it on the shelf. It is fewer and fewer flashbacks until there are almost none.

It’s kindness and love and life persisting beyond the impossible. It’s visceral and bloody and hard, but it is so very possible, and the bitterness of the journey makes its sweet triumphs, both little and large, all the richer.

Tears were a little triumph for Amélie, but they were a triumph nonetheless. They were concrete proof that Amélie was recovering.

“I…” Amélie began to speak, then her voice wavered and disappeared in a sob. She took a deep, shuddering breath then began again. “I’m not… I’m not proud of myself—  And, and… I’m not  _ well! _ ” she stammered. “God! I’m… I’m b-broken…”

Angela gently hushed her friend, rubbing the other woman’s back in concentric circles. “Sssh, my friend,” she whispered. “You’ll get there. I know you will.”

“How can you know?” Amélie asked, bitterness in her voice.

“Because I’ve been there,” Angela replied. “And I’ve seen this before.”

Amélie opened her mouth to retort, but just broke down into another sob. 

“Just let it out,” Angela said. “You don’t have to do anything else. I’m here with you. Just cry, you’ve earned it.”

And so Amélie did. And Angela remained there, holding her and softly cooing, bearing caring witness to Amélie’s sorrow.

This was healing.

* * *

Angela knows that Amélie’s time is coming near, that the last sands are ready to trickle to the bottom of the hour glass. Her condition worsens dramatically each day, to the point where Angela is certain her patient won’t last the week.

She can see the echoes of Amélie's failing health in the behavior of her few friends. Satya, who had involved herself in Amélie's care, is not one to express emotions outside of intimate moments with those she trusts, yet more than once Angela has seen her in the verge of tears in mission briefings or in the mess. Mercifully, Fareeha is usually nearby to steady her.

Hanzo has taken to visiting more, in spite of how painful such emotionally pregnant scenarios can be for him. Sometimes he reads to her. Other times they sit in silence, or converse in quiet tones. Each time he brews her fragrant tea, which she's never able to drink. Each visit he brews it, each visit she accepts the proffered cup and each visit he holds her steady as inevitably an expulsion of flowers causes her to choke on it.

Angela entrusts Amélie to Hanzo's attention and goes for walks with Genji. Sometimes they pass the room and catch a glimpse of the pair—his brother, her friend and patient—talking or sharing their customary tea, as if for some inscrutable ritual purpose.

Lena, as usual, focuses on Angela. The pair became inseparable friends after their mission in London during the Null Sector uprising. But she still finds the time to visit Amélie, the ex-sniper’s condition apparently enough for Lena to let go of the hurt she felt over Mondatta’s death. Amélie, for her part, doesn't antagonize Lena like she used to. The pair finally seem to be friends. Just in time, Angela supposes.

Even Gabriel makes an appearance, standing like a spectre over Amélie's bed and quietly holding her hand. He and Angela share a single wordless look as he leaves, neither ready to speak to the other. Not yet, at least.

But Sombra is the one whose behaviours resonate with Angela most. At a certain point she simply stops visiting. It's cowardly, but Angela finds it difficult to blame her. There's a certain threshold of loss after which any more becomes simply unspeakable. Angela reached it long ago, and she can see the same in Sombra's eyes. It's natural to want to run, as cruel as it might be.

Angela has never known when to run. Sometimes she suspects she has a perverse habit of “rubbernecking,” as Jesse might put it. The pain, at least, reminds her that she's still alive.

For all the effort Angela put into accepting her patient's decision, the rapid deterioration of Amélie's health makes the doctor's white knuckled grip on acceptance slip. It seems so pointless. Perhaps Angela could accept it if the illness were incurable—perhaps. However,  _ hanahaki _ has a cure, and so the entire affair feels like a fruitless exercise in masochism.

But no amount of cajoling, subtle or otherwise, seems to budge Amélie’s decision. If anything, Angela’s attempts to persuade her patient have only made the incorrigible woman dig her heels in further. 

Angela oscillates between denial, acceptance, and futile struggle. Earlier in the month she had decided she would force the unwanted surgery upon Amélie—better Amélie live and hate her than die. But she abandoned the plan quickly and, wracked with guilt, pilfered a Guinness from Lena’s poorly hidden cache. She held it in a shaking hand, staring the bottle down, before hurling it over one of the Watchpoint’s walls.

Lena had found her soon after, curled up and crying at the edge of the ramparts. “C’mon now, luv,” her friend had said softly. “Let’s get you to your room.”

“I’m sorry, Lena,” Angela had replied.

“It’s nothing, doc. What’re friends for if not pinching booze from now and again?”

Now Angela is going through the motions of the same mistake, preparing one of the Watchpoint’s operating rooms as Satya watches her skeptically. Angela returns her gaze and sighs. “You’ll be fine, Satya.”

“I’m not a nurse,” the former architect replies, crossing her arms over her chest. “And—”  

“Hush, you’ve been a great help!” Angela says, voice cracking as much as her nervous smile.

_ “And  _ that’s not why I’m concerned,” Satya interjects firmly, a barely restrained sour look passing across her face. “Your hands are shaking. Have you even been sleeping?”

Angela steadies her right hand with her left and chuckles anxiously. “Just a bit too much coffee. I’ll—”

_ “Angela.” _

The frigidity in Satya’s voice stops the doctor in her tracks. She stops fiddling with scalpels and watches Satya’s face.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you not to do this, Angela,” Satya says, more softly. Now, finally paying attention, Angela can see the crestfallen sadness in her expression, the wet tears building in her eyes. “It’s not what Amélie wants. And even if I may want it for her…”

“Satya…”

“...I won’t be party to it!” Satya shouts, tears spilling down her cheeks. “And I don’t want to watch Amélie’s illness devour you, too. Dammit, Angela—”

Angela rushes to Satya’s side, wrapping her friend and colleague up in a hug. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” She’s crying now, just as freely, and the pair both shake like leaves in a blustering wind.

Satya wraps her arms around Angela in turn, nuzzling into Angela’s neck, each wetting the lapels of the other’s lab coat with tears. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Me neither,” Angela says. For some reason, it makes her laugh; the absurdity of it, her absolute helplessness in the face of death, even after all her efforts. And how, after nearly four decades of living through loss after loss, she still is horrendously ill equipped to manage it.

Angela’s laughter sparks something similar in Satya, and the two lean against each other, laughing and crying under the weight of their grief. They collapse to the floor and fall back against the base of the operating table before both the tears and laughter subside enough to let them speak.

A silence slowly opens up between them, and then quickly snaps shut as Satya speaks. “I don’t want to lose two friends, okay?” she asks with a sniffle. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Angela murmurs and takes Satya’s hand in hers.

Satya squeezes Angela’s fingers. “I’m lucky I have Fareeha,” she continues. “Don’t do it alone. I couldn’t. You know we're here for you.”

“Thank you, Satya. I won’t.” 

“And we’ll love her as best we can. Until…”

Angela shushes her. “Don’t say it, please. She’s not gone. Not yet.”

Satya just glances at her, and squeezes her hand more tightly.

Eventually, they stand together and dust off their coats. “Athena,” Satya commands, “End surgical preparation procedures.”  

“Ending surgical preparations,” a synthesized voice replies from a nearby panel.

Angela begins collecting her instruments as Satya hovers just by the door.

Satya opens her mouth, hesitates, then asks, “Angela?”

“Mmm? It’s fine, Satya. I can clean up… It’s my mess, after all.”

“No, no. I wanted to ask you...”

Angela pauses, eyebrows raised quizzically.

“Do you… Do you think, perhaps, the object of Amélie’s affection… Could it be me?” The fingers of Satya’s prosthetic nervously massaged her other arm.

Angela sighs. “I’ve wondered that. I’ve even asked, but she won’t say.”

“Yes, I’ve tried myself…”

“I suppose we just won’t know,” Angela continues, her shoulders falling slightly. “It could be you, or me, or someone else entirely.”

“I just… I hope I’m not… responsible—”

“Even if it was you,” Angela interrupts, “you wouldn’t be responsible.” But Angela can’t blame Satya for the thought—hasn’t she thought the same thing?  

“Thank you, Angela,” Satya says. “Though, I’m quite sure it isn’t you.”

“What makes you say that?” Angela asks, brow furrowing.

Satya chuckles bitterly. “Because it’s so clear to me that you love her back.”

It feels like Angela’s stomach has dropped out at the bottom; guilt starts gnawing at her from the belly outwards. “Yes, of course,” she says with a faltering smile. But she knows that Satya is mistaken, that ever since that doctor dug those tulips from Angela’s chest, that kind of love for Amélie is an impossibility.

“Well then, doctor,” Satya says, “I’m going to go check on our patient.” She bows her head and exits through the doors.

Angela pauses, thinking of the flowers filling up Amélie’s lungs. It feels like she can’t breath. When she looks down, she’s holding a scalpel, and her hands are shuddering; shaking just like a leaf.  
  


So Angela remains as steady as she’s able, and tries to learn her lesson. She sits by Amélie’s bedside, and smiles and reads to her friend, and holds her patient’s cold, pale blue hands. She finds she’s stopped crying. She’s familiar with this—denial, dissociation. She simply refuses reality, and stops feeling much of anything at all.

She changes the bags for Amélie’s IV, updates her charts and changes out her bedpan and bucket, dumping bucketful after bucketful of roses and bile into biowaste disposal bins. Every 24 hours Amélie suffers through is a minor miracle. When Angela sleeps at night, she sleeps lightly, half expecting to be jolted awake by an alert from Athena, portending the expected.

When it happens though, she’s just in the other room, making tea in the medibay kitchenette. She hears Satya call her from the other room as Athena starts paging her from a nearby panel. 

The unlit cigarette drops from Angela's mouth and the mug from her hands. Hot tea and broken porcelain splash across the doctor's sensible flats as she turns on her heel and sprints towards her patient's room. Her lab coat flutters behind her like the wings of a panicked dove.

She came to a skidding halt before Amélie's room and burst through the doors to find a tearful Satya steady Amélie as she vomited violently. Recently, blood had come up with the already red petals, and now it seemed to be at it's worst.

It took a moment for Angela's brain to parse the scene. She remain frozen just inside the door, staring. The bucket was tipped by the bedside, and the white sheets were stained red. There was a brief window where Angela thought she was looking at viscera spilled out in Amelie's lap. Her mind snapped back to the times—far too many—that she had seen human guts spilling out from mortal wounds, like the filling of some grotesque pinata.

But then she recognizes it as a pile of blood-drenched flowers, more than she'd ever seen a patient cough up. The stream of petals keeps spilling from Amélie's mouth as she bends over her lap, each fresh expulsion of blood, bile and flora accompanied by an excruciating noise from Amélie. It sounds like some terrible death rattle—it sounds as if Amélie is going to vomit herself inside out.

Satya stands over her, tears in her eyes and panic written all over her face. “Angela! What do I do? What do I do?” As much as Angela had tried to prepare her friend, there was only so much Satya could do in expectation of something so terrible. The experience of it was beyond imagination.

Angela rushes to the opposite side of the bed. It's clear that Amélie has minutes left, and a sudden panic grips the doctor's heart. This is her last chance to speak to her friend, to see her moving and alive, however painful it is to watch. “Go Satya,” Angela commands, “Get Fareeha. And Ana, if she's on base. I'll take over here.”

Satya just stares at Angela for a moment, Amélie heaving helplessly between them. “Go!” Angela shouts, and it’s finally enough to break through Satya’s shock and snap her into action. Stifling her tears, she rushes for the door.

“And Satya!” Angela adds as she busies herself tending to Amélie. “You did well.” She casts a sympathetic glance over her shoulder as the other woman freezes in the doorway. Satya still looks petrified, but there’s the faint glow of appreciative warmth on her face.

The spume of petals from Amélie briefly abates, and she collapses back in bed wheezing. One shaking hand weakly reaches out towards Satya.  _ “Merci, mon amie…”  _ Her voice is faint enough as to be practically inaudible.

Satya nods and takes a step backwards into the hall. “I love you, Amélie,” she says, voice quavering like ripples in water. Amélie begins to reply, but finds it too difficult and settles for a nod. Satya smiles weakly. Then the doors close with a pneumatic hiss, and all Angela can hear from the hall is the clicking of the woman’s heels as she rushes to find Fareeha.

“Saving the worst for yourself,” Amélie whispers with a sly smirk. 

“Save your breath,  _ hartse,” _ Angela replies as continues working, wrapping up the vomit covered sheets and dropping the parcel on the floor by the foot of the bed. 

“Unkind to yourself...” Every word looks like it’s agony for Amélie, but still she persists, the bemused curve of her lip quaking with each ragged breath. “Share that in common, eh,  _ chérie?” _

“Amélie, please,” Angela pleads. “...Satya shouldn’t have to see…” She trails off as she retrieves the bucket and places it in Amélie’s lap, but the stubborn patient just tips it back to the floor. Angela sucks in air through her teeth—she supposes Amélie will be recalcitrant until her final breath.

_ Her final breath, _ she thinks.  _ It’s not fair. Not again, not again. _

Angela supposes she’s no different from Amélie, no less incorrigible. Even against the inevitable, they struggle endlessly, like Laelaps and the Teumessian fox. Bull-headed, Angela retrieves a bag valve mask from a nearby drawer and hurries to Amélie’s side, but when she tries to place it over Amélie’s mouth, one pale blue hand just bats it away weakly.

It clatters to the ground beside the bucket, and Angela quakes in place. The pale hand find’s Angela’s and squeezes it weakly. The doctor is ashamed to find her own limbs tremoring just as violently as her patient’s when she squeezes back. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Angela murmurs.

“Nothing…”

Angela lets out a wet, shuddering sigh of defeat. For a moment the world feels like it’s been suspended in gel. Everything feels slow and final, all the strange rhythms of the room—the weak ping of the EKG, Amélie’s wheezing breaths, the ticking of the antiquated clock Amélie insisted on keeping by her bedside—sound muted and alien. The moment feels as though it’s been frozen in amber, or captured in the flash of a bulb. Angela has the vague intimation that she will remember this moment exactly for the rest of her life.

(She will, and she will think of it often.)

Amélie tugs Angela closer, or rather attempts to do so. She hardly has the strength to hold herself up, let alone force another’s movement, but Angela accepts the suggestion like a follow responds to her lead when dancing. The doctor presses against the edge of the bed, and leans down, her ear to Amélie’s cold lips. The doctor can feel her patient’s weak, uneven breath as Amélie whispers her good bye.

“I shouldn’t…” A wheezing breath. “Shouldn’t be so shameless... But…” A cough, and a tickle of flowers on Angela’s ear. “I can’t regret…” Amélie turns her head to the side and vomits on the pillow. Angela just wraps her arms around her friend, clutching the woman desperately as she heaves. “Having known you…” A careful, laboured breath as Amélie recovers from the exertion of emesis. 

The beeping from the EKG becomes irregular. Angela knows that the flowers are too voluminous now to be expelled. There’s no end to this other than death.

“Whyever would you regret it?” Angela finds her tone somehow odd to her ears, almost like she’s on the verge laughing, or melting down into absolute panic. Something in her voice sounds broken, even to her.

“I hurt people,” Amélie manages. Her body is drenched in sweat, and Angela can feel it soaking through her hospital gown. “...I’m hurting you, I know… But I’m selfish…”

“No, my dear _ , _ you’re one of the kindest hearts I’ve ever met,” Angela whispers back, her voice watery and weak. She relishes the faint press of Amélie’s chest against hers as her patient takes her dying breaths. The EKG’s beeping keeps time with Amélie’s moribund heartbeat.

“I’m not the woman I was…” Amélie’s practically wheezes the words, slowly enunciating around a mouth still rife with petals.

“You never had to be,” Angela whispers, her fingers clutching Amélie’s hospital gown white-knuckled. “You’re more lovely now than you ever have been.”

Amélie opens to speak, but whether it be for emotions or her illness, her voice catches. When she starts to speak again, her voice is quivering and as faint as a ghost.  _ “Merci, mon ange. Pour tout. Angela… Je t’ai—”   _ But she’s cut off by her own stomach-churning agonized scream.

For a moment Angela is confused by the sudden blow to her chest, until she realizes that Amélie had sat bolt upright and began to vomit again, more violently, even, than she had earlier. She’d taken Angela with her, almost making the doctor lose her balance completely, and was now vomiting over her shoulder, spilling petals and vomit down Angela’s lab coat.

Angela just holds her friend tightly as the last of Amélie’s love spills out of her in horrid gushes. It seems like an eternity, of warm, acrid fluid and red roses drenching Angela’s back crimson. And then with a final quiver, Amélie goes from rigid to limp. Angela holds her, weeping helplessly against her friend’s frail form as the EKG flatlines.

The tone from the machine has the finality of a coffin lid slamming shut, and Angela fills up with such unbearable grief that she feels she might drown. Tears spill from her eyes as she keens and wails with the fury of a banshee. Her mind floods with a thousand thoughts and feelings, all in the matter of a second.

Amélie is gone. Amélie, whom Angela could never love enough, not anymore, try as she might, because of that blasted surgery and how unlovable she herself had been. Amélie, who had been wounded like no one ever should, and still had the gentleness to plant roses and deliver furtive gifts to those she loved. Amélie, with her coy smirks and her piles of books.

And Amélie had almost said it.  _ “Je t’aime.” _ It was as Angela had feared—this was all her fault. If anyone is undeserving of love—if anyone’s presence should be regrettable—she’s certain it’s her. She couldn’t save Amélie, and had been so lost in her own grief and trauma, that it was only now, with Amélie lifeless in her arms, that she realizes how very, very deeply she loves her friend.

It feels as if the world had ended along with Amélie’s pulse. Somewhere in time, as she had helped Amélie heal, the two women’s hearts had joined in an elaborate dance, and now one dancer has gone still.

And then, in that same second, something in Angela’s heart sparks and catches light. She feels something she hasn’t felt in years, neither for Amélie nor anyone. She feels a love so burning and passionate she’s breathless for it. Not simply  _ philia, _ but  _ eros,  _ full blooming and fragrant.

She’s stunned for a moment and lets Amélie’s corpse drop backwards into bed. Her weeping turns into bitter laughter. How ironic that Amélie’s death should be what cracks the seal on her own cold heart. She deserves it, she’s sure, but Amélie shouldn’t have had to pay that price.

She takes Amélie’s cold cheeks in her hands and leans over her. “I’m so sorry, Amélie… Amélie, I love you…” Pressing her body against Amélie’s cold form, she draws her friend’s lifeless lips into a kiss. It’s macabre, but it’s all Angela can think to do—the best way she’s able to say good bye.  

Then Amélie’s body jolts and a ragged cough fills Angela’s mouth with flower petals. She jerks away in surprise, spitting and sputtering the petals from her mouth. Amélie’s jolts again. For a moment, Angela thinks it’s nothing more than the last sparks in Amélie’s brain popping and fizzling out. But then she inhales, the intake of air sucking twisted petals down with it, and the EKG springs back to life.

Amélie’s body heaves with the force of a terrible cough, and then another and another. Angela springs up and stares, confusion turning to horror as Amélie begins to vomit again. Angela jams her arm under Amélie’s back and helps lift her up gently, cradling her head as she vomits into her lap. 

At first the petals are red, as Angela has come to expect, but then Angela notices that they’re coming out speckled white. Curious she picks one up and rubs it between her fingers, only to discover that they’re wholly white as snow, but flecked with blood. The flow continues, white rose petals spilling into Amélie’s lap and Angela’s hand, until finally they stop and Angela lays her love back down in bed.

The doors open and there’s a rush of footsteps, but Angela pays the rush behind her no mind. All her attention is on Amélie’s face as the other woman’s eyelids flutter and then open. Amélie gazes back at her, eyes blurry and confused. Then there is a flash of recognition, and she smiles weakly.

“An angel? This must be heaven...” She barely gets the cheeky quip out before descending into a fit of coughing.

Angela just laughs. “Sssh, love…” She sits on the edge of the bed and places a finger on Amélie’s lips, brushing away loose petals as she does.

“Angela, you…”

“Mmhm.” Angela leans in, smiling softly. “I love you, too.” She plants a kiss on Amélie’s lips. The kiss is sour with bile, but to Angela nothing has ever tasted so sweet.

There’s an excited squeal from the doorway, and Angela looks up to see Lena hopping up and down, barely containing her excitement at the display. “It’s like a fairy tale!” she exclaims gleefully.

Satya, standing nearby with Fareeha, can barely maintain her look of disgust. “A  _ fairy tale? _ They’re covered in vomit!”

Angela looks down at herself, Amélie and the bed—all sticky with the utter mess of love. “Yes, I… suppose we are, aren’t we?”  

Satya gags, and Fareeha pulls her close, gently rubbing her back. “You should be relieved,  _ habibti,” _ she says, utterly bemused, “your friend is safe.”  

Out in the hallway, Ana and Hanzo peak in, with Winston watching the display from behind them. A monitor lights up, displaying Athena’s attention as well. Amélie huffs. “Voyeurs…”

Angela can hardly bring herself to care, though being stared at does bring a rosy red hue to her cheeks. It must be a strange sight, the pair holding hands—a mess of tear stains, flower petals, blood and vomit—but all that really matters to Angela is the kiss. Amélie is alive. 

And Angela is so very in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and questions welcome. 
> 
> Follow me on tumblr at [galpalgadot](https://galpalgadot.tumblr.com/).
> 
>  
> 
> References:
> 
>  
> 
>  **Scene 1:** _Le Morte d'Arthur_ by Sir Thomas Malory is Malory's reworking of existing Arthurian mythological sources, including both original material and repetitions of previous stories from both the English and French Arthurian canon. It's patchwork nature reminds me, fondly, of fan fiction. 
> 
> The fall of Camelot also had a lot to do with Mordred, the son Arthur incestuously had with his sister and then promptly attempted to kill, but that subject material is... less sexy than the Lancelot/Guinevere story, and so I left it out of Angela's argumentation. 
> 
> **Scene 3:** _Yahrzeit_ literally translates to "Time of Year" and refers to the anniversary of a person's death. _Yahrzeit_ candles are often lit in memory of the deceased. The date of the anniversary is tracked according to the Hebrew, not the Gregorian, calendar.


	3. Perennial (Epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amélie's _hanahaki_ is cured and she and Angela are together. The disease has taken its toll on her health, but that hasn't stopped the couple from nurturing each other and creating a life together.
> 
> A short epilogue and a peek into Angela and Amélie's relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [NoirSongbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirSongbird), [Renegate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/renegate) and [Tah the Trickster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TahTheTrickster) for beta-ing.
> 
> Literary references explained in the end notes, once again.

_One year later._

Angela opens the door to her Paris apartment and dumps her luggage in the doorway. She’s exhausted—she’d had so much to tell her parents, and the trip had been draining even if it was good. It was, perhaps, her most fruitful yet. The wound of that kind of loss never vanishes, but for the first time it feels almost manageable, like a scar that has mostly healed over.  

She’s stitched up so many of her old wounds this past year, though not alone. She’s had a second pair of hands helping her, healthier now, though with the slightest remaining tinge of periwinkle. And she, in turn, has helped Amélie stitch up wounds of her own.

It hasn’t been easy, but neither of them had ever been easy. Still, it’s healing, and that’s what matters.

Angela still doesn’t know why it wasn’t until that final moment that she could admit to herself how much she loved Amélie. Amélie still won’t say for certain why she so stubbornly hid the object of her affection. But Angela supposes they’ve both made mistakes, and mercifully learned from them.

In the past year they’ve learned to love and care for themselves. They’ve learned to better communicate, and to reflect. Their learning has not been faultless, but they have each other’s love to nestle into when loving themselves becomes too hard. And they both see it _—they’re getting better._

Angela’s tired spirits lift at the thought of seeing Amélie, and she calls ‘I’m home!” into the quiet apartment.

“Hi home,” a voice calls from the kitchen.

Angela groans dramatically.

Olivia Colomar, infamous hacker and wanted criminal, walks into the hall with a duffle bag over her shoulder. “Don’t be like that.”

Angela smirks. “Always _so_ good to see you, Olivia.”

The other woman squirms at the use of her name—still unused to hearing it from someone she considers a friend. She, too, is healing. “Yeah, yeah,” Olivia replies and looks at her feet. “Whatever. How was uh… the thing?”

Angela sighs. “It was good… Better, I think. I don’t know, I’m tired but… It was good.”

Olivia glances back up at her and smiles slightly. “I’m glad. Um. Y’know, my offer stands.”

Angela smiles softly. “Thank you, Olivia. Really. I think next year I might try and bring Amélie… And then I’ll see about going with friends.”

The other woman shrugs lightly, as if it were nothing, but Angela knows how much it means for Olivia to offer that—company for the trip to the graveyard. The infamous Sombra doesn’t show such intimacy lightly.

“How was Amélie while I was gone?” Angela asks.

“Good, only a couple coughing fits. Missed you though.”

That makes Angela’s heart flutter. “Is she on the roof?”

“Mmhmm. She’s up there with Guinevere. Anyway! I should get going, I’ve gotta—”

“Please, don’t even tell me. The less I know, the better.”

Olivia gives her a shit-eating grin. “Yeah, probably.”

“When you’re in town next… stop by for tea. We should catch up.”

Olivia’s grin narrows into a genuine smile. “Yeah… I’d like that.” She brushes by Angela and steps out into the hall. _“Adios, doctora.”_ She gives Angela a parody of the Tracer salute before making for the elevators.

 

A few minutes later, Angela is pushing open the door to the rooftop, squinting as she catches the setting sun in her eyes. She tugs her jacket close as she makes her way out into the rooftop garden she and Amélie have been cultivating for the past couple months—one of the advantages of a top floor apartment.

A Siberian cat with a stub tail pads out from a cluster of tulips and rubs against Angela’s leg.  
“Guin, my love, I’ve missed you!” She leans down to give Guinevere a scratch beneath the chin.

“Typical. You haven’t seen me in days, and the cat gets attention first,” a delightfully familiar voice calls out. Amélie closes a volume of Henry James’ short stories and places it on the small table beside her deck chair with a huff.

Angela paces over to her slowly, an impish grin crossing her face. “What can I say? I missed my pussy.”

Amélie lowers her sunglasses with one finger and gives her lover a sour look over their rim—but the slightest curvature at the corner of her mouth belays her amusement.

“What are you reading?” Angela asks as she reaches Amélie’s side, leaning against the table flirtatiously and walking her fingers across the cover of the book.

 _“Daisy Miller,”_ Amélie replies coolly. “I finished _The Aspern Papers_ earlier.”

“At least you're past your medieval phase.”

Amélie chuckles. “I _was_ thinking of rereading _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”_

“Don’t you dare.”

“I do dare.”

“You musn’t.”

“Perhaps you must find some way to distract me, then,” Amélie says, her smirk blossoming fully.

Angela giggles, and looks out over their garden. “How are our babies?”

“It’s getting cold,” Amélie says. “They’re starting to die off.”

“The perennials will come back next year.”

“They will.”

“And more importantly... how’s my baby?” Angela looks back at Amélie, hand straying upwards, fingertips brushing her lover’s hair.

“You’re worse than Lena and Emily,” Amélie replies with a pout.

“That bad?” Angela asks.

“I’ve been lonely.” She grabs Angela’s wrist and tugs her forward, pulling Angela into her lap. “You’ll need to make it up to me.” Cool fingers brush through Angela’s hair and pluck out one strand.

“Ow!”

“More grey… You’ve stopped dyeing it,” Amélie muses as she twists the follicle between her fingers.

“I guess it’s time to accept my age, no?” Angela says, turning her head aside bashfully.

Amélie’s fingers gently brush against Angela’s chin and turn it towards her. Gazing into her lover’s eyes, Amélie murmurs, “You’re beautiful.”

Angela turns pink. Amélie chuckles throatily, her laughter turning into a cough.

“It’s, um! It is cold out here,” Angela stammers. “Come inside, love. You know you shouldn’t be out too long in this weather, not with your lungs as they are.”

“Wait,” Amélie whispers as the coughing abates. She slips a hand behind Angela’s neck while the other cups Angela’s cheek, and she pulls Angela in to a kiss.

It still surprises Angela, how electric it feels, how it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Even after a year of kisses, each time her lips press against Amélie’s it’s like fire—like nothing else she’s ever known. She lets out a little moan and a giggle as she pulls away. “And how’s my baby now?”

“Better,” Amélie replies with a smile that is completely devoid of guile. “Better.”

Angela stands and offers Amélie her hand. “Good. Let’s go warm up by the fire, and we’ll see how ‘better’ we can get.”

Amélie chuckles again, and again breaks into a fit of coughing. It pains Angela that the _hanahaki_ left such a mark on Amélie’s health, but Angela knows it’s a price Amélie would pay again for the love they share. It can be painful to love, whether yourself or another, and painful to speak an honest heart, but that is where the most fragrant blossoms grow.

They both were so lost in their grief and trauma that they’d almost drowned. Love, however, had given them a second chance—not simply to care for each other, but perhaps to care for themselves.   

Amélie takes her hand and rises, slipping her book under her arm. The pair go back inside, Guinevere trailing behind them. Later that evening, they’re curled up under blankets by their electric hearth, cuddling lazily in its warmth. After her trip, Angela is exhausted, and nearly dozes off, her head resting in Amélie’s lap.

Her bleary eyes flutter open, and she sees Amélie staring down at her thoughtfully.

“What?” she asks with a sleepy laugh.

 _“...Je t’aime, mon amoure,”_ Amélie murmurs.

Angela smiles and caresses her lover’s neck. Her fingers register the steady beat of Amélie’s rose blossom heart, and Angela thinks to herself that there’s not a single thing in this world more precious.

Someday she’ll have to let it go, but for now it’s hers—warm, secure and safe. And her heart, in turn, is safe with Amélie. Two hearts, entwined like roses wrapped around a trellis, growing in tandem. And Angela couldn’t be happier.

“I know, _mayn neshume,”_ Angela whispers back. “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References:
> 
> **Epilogue** : _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ is a chivalric romance written in Middle English by a poet known variably as the Gawain Poet or the Pearl Poet, who is also notable for the alliterative poem _Pearl_.
> 
>  _The Aspern Papers_ and _Daisy Miller_ are novellas by American author Henry James, and can be found collected together in single volumes along with James' other short works. In _Daisy Miller_ the central character, Winterbourne, meets the titular woman in Switzerland and pursues her romantically. She eventually contracts malaria ("Roman Fever") while in Italy and dies at the end of the narrative.
> 
> "Neshume" (also transliterated as "neshama") is a term of endearment in Yiddish and Hebrew, literally meaning "breath" and translating to "soul." It's the equivalent of calling someone with whom one is romantically involved "honey," "dear" or "darling."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and questions welcome. 
> 
> Follow me on tumblr at [galpalgadot](https://galpalgadot.tumblr.com/).


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